Keith Hudson's Musings

Alpha and beta humans

One fact of life that I became convinced about some years ago when writing on the Net is that we humans are becoming two breeds. To follow Aldous Huxley, let us call them alphas and betas. It is certainly occurring in the advanced countries and there’s a touch of it between them and the poorest countries.

The reason why this is happening is that automation is now proceeding at such a pace because it is an increasingly necessary cost-saving factor in a global economy. This means that there is selection for intelligence going on today as never before by means of young ladies making sure that they select capable, highly-intelligent young man as the potential parent for their children.

There are heaps of evidence that this is occurring in advanced countries. It’s not a sharp division yet but as cultural-like tends to breed with cultural-like then the separation is bound to grow within a few generations. One piece of evidence is that since David Cameron became prime minister in 2010, more than 400 public libraries have closed down in Britain There were then 96 million books on the nation’s shelves, now there are 82 million. At such an attrition rate there ‘ll be none in a decades’ time.

But in tomorrow’s world of increasingly dumbed-down jobs for most do half the population need to read? They’ll get by most of the time with a small vocabulary of names they’re familiar with. As for the increasingly scientifically education elite, they’ll certainly need to be able to read and write.